


wrists/ankles

by whatifitrainedtoday



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Gen, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Someone please give these kids a hug, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, they're good siblings really, they're just bad at talking to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26286334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatifitrainedtoday/pseuds/whatifitrainedtoday
Summary: klaus is screaming.also featuring trauma overlap, blanket forts, and not dying horribly
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 9
Kudos: 232





	wrists/ankles

Vanya is woken by screaming. It takes her a moment to shuffle through possible scenarios - kidnapping (again), apocalypse (again), assassins (again) - before realising that the screaming had already died out and there didn’t seem to be anyone moving around or anything on fire. She slid out of bed and made her way along the hallway, noting silence from Five, Allison and Luther’s rooms. Diego’s room was empty, which is concerning, but as soon as she noticed this she saw him up ahead, stood outside Klaus’s door. He looks at her helplessly.

“He was screaming again.”

“Again?” She asked, and he nodded. The look which passed between them makes Vanya feel like they’re children again, like Dad’s pushed one of them too far in training and they’re stood outside their room deciding whether it would end up being worse to leave them or help them. She takes the initiative and pushes the door open.

Klaus is backed up against the headboard of his bed, blankets shoved far away from him. He is trembling a little, and seems to be muttering under his breath while intermittently rubbing his wrists. Vanya coughs to gently draw attention to her presence, and he jolts upright, eyes meeting hers, and she notices the quick, uneven breaths shaking his body. Vanya goes to hold his hand, and he moves backwards almost violently, slamming his back against the wall, and she raises her hands and takes a step back, darting a worried look at Diego, who shrugs.

She sits carefully on the edge of the bed, and just starts talking. She hasn’t had to do this since they were children. She talks about what she did that day - mostly violin practice - and about her plans for the rest of the week - also mostly violin practice, there’s a concert coming up, what can she say. She watches as Klaus flexes his hands, seeing ‘HELLO’/’GOODBYE’ flash in her peripheral vision as he moves one, then the other. He’s starting to calm down, she can tell, but she keeps going, with occasional contributions from Diego.

Just as she and Diego are discussing their ideas for breakfast tomorrow, Klaus takes a few deep breaths, then sits back up. He smiles weakly at her, then looks over at Diego. “If this is an intervention, you’re about six months too late.” His voice cracks on the last word, and he sighs, drawing further into himself. “Sorry.”

Vanya moves herself to sit cross-legged, shuffling to get comfortable. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

Klaus shakes his head, and Diego sighs, sitting down on the bed next to Vanya. 

“Since when have any of us talked about our problems anyway? I’ll just get on back to sleep, and you can get back to not blowing shit up, and you can get back to being Batman or whatever it is you do at night.” Klaus nods as if this is a compelling argument, but Vanya can see that he’s still flicking his eyes from one corner of the room to the other, and his hand is now braced against the bed as if preparing to leap into action. She looks at Diego and raises her eyebrows, indicating that it’s his turn to try to help. 

“Well…” he says, clearly stalling for time, “if you don’t want to talk, that’s fine, but I’ll be staying here until you stop looking like a deer in headlights.” With that, Diego flops backwards on the bed, causing the mattress to jump. “Get used to sharing a bed, ghost boy.”

Klaus mumbles something that sounded like “fuck off”, but smiles as he does it. Vanya rolls her eyes. “Klaus, are you sure you don’t want to talk about whatever’s going on?”

Diego shrugs. “We’ve got enough trauma overlap between the three of us that at least one of us will be able to help. If not, we can go wake the others up. You’re safe with us, you know. You’re our brother, we want to help you.” Diego quickly regrets this last statement, because Klaus initially attempts to smile and then dissolves into tears. “Oh fuck. I’m sorry. I can go? I can get Allison, and she and Vanya can deal with this instead, and I’ll just… go?” 

His rambling is stopped by Klaus shaking his head. “You haven’t done anything wrong, asshole. Don’t wake anyone else up for my bullshit, it’s enough that I’ve got you two out of bed already. If you want to go though, that’s cool.”

“No, I don’t want to go.”

“But if you wanted to…”

Vanya sighs and cuts across the two of them. “Stop apologising. I’m supposed to be the one who apologises all the time. Klaus, what can we do to actually help you?”

Klaus shrugs. “It’s stupid. I coped well enough by myself when it actually happened, and now I’m not even having any problems for once, it pops back into my life? Lame.”

“When what actually happened, buddy?” Diego is being gentler than usual with Klaus, sounding more like a caring older brother than the usual disappointed parent tone he takes with him.

Klaus mumbles something incomprehensible. Diego sits up and looks at him, and Vanya tilts her head to one side. There was a moment of silence, and then Klaus huffs and rolls his eyes.

“The whole Hazel and Cha-Cha thing. The…” He waved his arms vaguely, evidently trying to get something across without putting it into words, then noticed the blank looks on his siblings’ faces. “The torture. Thing. The being tied up and tortured and having to get yelled at by dead people with their brains hanging out while I sobered up thing.” 

Diego looks as if he’s been punched in the gut. Vanya lets out a small, sharp breath, and rubs her ankles almost reflexively.

Klaus sighs. “It’s stupid. I was having a bad dream, that’s all. Having a bad time, and I woke up, and the blanket was tangled around my wrists, and I thought… I didn’t know where I was, and thought I might be back there, and I screamed. I’m sorry for dragging both of you out of bed, and I’m going to just. Have a drink and then go back to sleep.”

There is a long silence, broken by Vanya. “Can I touch you?” 

Klaus looks like he’s about to make a snarky comment, but thinks better of it and nods. Vanya shuffles further up the bed and leans herself against her brother’s thin frame, feeling the warmth of him against her. Diego seems to take this as a hint and also makes his way up the bed, which definitely isn’t big enough for three people, and twists himself so that he’s lying in Klaus’s lap. 

The three of them lie there in comfortable quiet for a while, until both boys notice that Vanya is shuddering. Klaus looks over to her and is shocked to notice that she’s crying too. She blinks quickly and brushes away a tear with the edge of her sleeve. “Would you believe I was just sympathy crying with you? I’m going to guess not.”

Diego frowns. “My turn to ask - what’s the problem, little sister?” 

Vanya stares up at the ceiling, and for a moment he thinks she hasn’t heard, until she sighs. “I actually have the exact same issue after what happened at the FBI building.”

“I thought they were just questioning you?”

“Questioning with a bit of added help, same as you.” She rolls up the edge of her pyjama bottoms, and reveals shiny, scarred skin around her ankles where leather restraints had sat. “They didn’t hit me or anything, mostly um. Electrocution. Not great. I get the issues.”

Diego surprises them both by sitting up and laughing. There’s a moment of awkward silence, and he coughs, almost embarrassed. “You really did pick the right two siblings to scream at. Same here, dude. Mental institution for a fair amount of time, and I wasn’t exactly well-behaved. Straightjackets are really shitty. Didn’t know if any of you were actually alive to come get me, either.”

“I mean, I didn’t really think anyone was coming for me either.” Klaus throws this out casually, avoiding eye contact by staring resolutely at the ceiling, but the other two notice it anyway.

“Of course we would have come for you, what do you mean?” Vanya asks, shifting to lean more closely against her brother. As she does this, she feels Diego tense next to her, and she realises. “We didn’t come for you.”

Klaus nods. “Nobody came for me. I know… I know rationally that it wasn’t a thing. I know the apocalypse was happening and you were trying to figure out what was going on with Five and Mom and it’s cool, guys, it’s cool, but I didn’t know that then, I was just trying to manage. And I didn’t die horribly, so it’s probably fine, right? And it was so dumb, I could manage the torture but I couldn’t manage the withdrawal, like really? My own mistakes coming back to bite me in the ass are what tortures me? Fucked up, right?”

There is a moment of quiet.

“If it makes you feel better, it was the drugs that got me as well, really,” Vanya says, also not making eye contact.

Klaus finally looks at Vanya. “The FBI gave you drugs? What do I have to do to get drugs?”

She shrugs. “Have a Russian name during the Cold War. And maybe also try and blow people up a little bit.” She pauses, then raises an eyebrow. “Also kiss someone else’s wife, but that’s more of a tangential reason.”

Klaus nods in understanding, and pats Vanya’s hand. She takes this as an acceptance of an apology she hadn’t said, correctly realising that she and Klaus are okay. Klaus kicks Diego with the leg Diego isn’t lying on. “Stop blaming yourself, dipshit. I can feel you doing it.”

Diego goes to apologise and then, to his horror, can’t get the words out. “I’m s- I’m so- I’m sorry, I - “ He stops, and takes a deep breath, trying to get out something more complex than a two-word apology. He’s fucked over Klaus, and he’s definitely fucked over Vanya, what kind of brother is he at this point? 

Diego’s train of thought is cut off by Klaus. “Is your thing the reason I keep finding you sleeping on the sofa?”

“You knew about that?”

Vanya snorts. “Of course we know about that. Neither of us can sleep. I’ve found you on the sofa plenty of times.”

The room is quiet again, until Vanya notices that Klaus is still playing with his hands, folding and unfolding his fingers around his wrists. She smiles. “Hey, so, I have a plan.”

Twenty minutes later, there’s a blanket fort constructed over Klaus’s bed. There’s a chair inside, which Diego originally said was for him, one of Vanya’s speakers, and a table with some snacks Klaus produced from a drawer. Diego had originally been determined to watch over his siblings from the chair, but Klaus had yanked him into bed with a “come on, Edward Cullen, just come cuddle”, and he’d ended up on one side of Klaus with Vanya on the other.

“It’s not your fault.” Vanya can feel the vibrations through Klaus’s stomach as he says this. “I mean it. It’s not either of your faults and it’s not anyone else in the family’s fault either. If I wasn’t having nightmares about that, I’d be having nightmares about the mausoleum, or about seeing people with their insides hanging out, or about almost overdosing in an alleyway somewhere. Today was just a bad one.” 

There’s a soft knock at the door, and the three of them jump. After a few seconds without anyone answering, the door opens anyway to show Allison, who smiles softly.

Vanya smiles. “How much of that did you hear?”

Allison doesn’t answer, instead just saying “Can I join?” and sliding herself next to Diego without waiting for an answer. The bed is now officially too small for four people. “Luther wants to know if he can join too, by the way.”

“There’s no room for big boy in this bed. But he can come in,” Klaus says, and as if on cue he hears heavy footsteps in the hallway, and Luther is making his way through the door, apologising quietly.

Before Luther can even sit down at the end of the bed, there’s a flash of blue light and Five is sat in the chair next to the bed, pushing blankets away from his face. “I was a dick too.”

“How thin are the walls in this house?” Klaus wonders, but it’s only an idle thought. He’s secretly relieved that his siblings are here. Even just knowing that they all know what’s wrong, sneaky eavesdropping bastards that they are, is helpful. He knows, really knows, that his family care about him. Even if he’s spent this long afraid that they don’t. Here, though, with Luther’s snores already starting to reverberate through the bed and the rest of his siblings clustered around him, he feels secure. The pressure around him is no longer threatening, but reassuring. He feels Diego’s calloused hand and Vanya’s small one take his, and he smiles sleepily, closing his eyes. 

Vanya smiles too. It’s okay for now.

**Author's Note:**

> me? projecting on the hargreeves siblings? it's more likely than you think


End file.
